Archive for Dezember, 2009

The exhibition was organized by Source. Nie Zheng had taken pictures over a period of 40 days of people in Beijing under the theme „Life is Tough“. Like a Chinese lady working very hard in a magazine as an editor for over 7 years, a Japanese guy opening an Italian restaurant, Taiwanese opening a Taiwanese snack bar in Beijing, old Chiense people doing the early morning exercise in the Temple of Heaven, a stray cat, a Japanese guy that has a barber shop in Beijing and has been cutting hair for over 11 years every day for 12 hours, Chinese street construction workers.

I am a foreigner in Beijing who was a competitive athlete for 20 years and opened a bicycle shop in the traditional heart of the capital of the Bicycle Kingdom. So he had also taken a a picture of me riding my huge 36 inch unicycle the day we had put together the tall bike. That picture is on the bottom left side of this picture and he had given me a print that I will hang in my bike shop.

He invited me to come over before this exhibition opening when the media and press were there for a short interview.

Nie Zheng was then requested to sign the huge wall.

We then went for a huge and delicious dinner and came back to Source just for the official opening of the exhibition to the public.

Then there was some introduction and question to the photographers before the short movie about their work was presented to the public. You can see Nie Zheng riding around Beijing on his fixed gear bicycle and also my bike and juggling shop in that movie 🙂

My photographer friend Simon Lim came to my Natooke shop to take pictures of my bicycle parts. We started with the Taiwanese luma rear flip-flop track hubs produced by Formula for fixed gear and single speed bikes.

Then we did the matching Taiwanese luma front track hubs produced by Formula for fixed gear and single speed bikes.

We also took pictures of the various Taiwanese Lasco fixed gear and single speed cranks and chainrings.

Then he took pictures of the sturdy Taiwanese full CNC luma fixed gear cogs in sizes 13 teeth to 22 teeth.

And also the Japanese Shimano Dura-Ace cogs with NJS stamp.

All the pictures turned out great! It is so good to have a professional do them. Simon also has a blog about his adventures.

Greening the Beige had a small event called „Fresh Start“ to view the video and pictures of this years events as well as capture ideas for next year.

We decided to do a first critical mass bike ride to the event. But unfortunately it was the coldest day of the year. It was freezing and we only had 5 bicycle riders – 2 girls and 3 guys. So in the cold of the night we only cycled very directly to the venue. And we were happy when we had arrived and gotten our free cold drinks. The next CM bike ride should be on the last Friday in January 2010 and I am sure we will have more cyclists.

The Chinese luxury goods magazine iLook sent Ethan to come and interview me regarding fixed gear bicycle culture in China. It turns out that he started the fixed gear group and blog „Ocean Factory“ in Dalian, a Northern Chinese coastal city. Unfortunately there are currently still only 3 fixed gear riders in Dalian so far as the city is quite hilly. The photographer of iLook took a picture of Ethan and me in front of my bicycle shop.

A lot of people ask me if there are bicycle couriers in Beijing. Well of course! …but not the kind you are thinking of. A lot of goods in the center of the city are delivered on two or tree wheels. It is often some elderly Chinese guy that cycles in the summer with his tank top rolled up to the arm pits, spitting on the ground while smoking a cigarette and cycling at an amazingly slow pace.

But there are also the companies specialized in delivery like EMS (Express Mail Delivery) that use bikes. Today I say a nice EMS Flying Pigeon in the Beijing modern flashy CBD district.

The guys riding these bikes ride faster than the typical tricycle delivery guys, but I would not call them bicycle messengers or couriers. And they often do not ride because they like riding but because their boss only gives them a bike and that is their job. So a very different perspective compared to bicycle couriers in other metropolitan cities around the world. But I wonder if Beijing will have bicycle couriers in the future – especially when the streets are more and more jammed and it will be obvious that cycling is the fastest way to get around or important documents delivered. I hope so.

The Beijing Actors Workshop in Beijing has been holding workshops on playwriting, directing as well as acting. And those three disciplines form the theatrical triathlon which was displayed this weekend at the Beijing International New Short Play Festival. Today they had 5 short plays on stage.

The first one was called „Sex and the forbidden city“ and was about the issues of foreign women in Beijing and how hard it is for them to find a date. I could relate with the four female characters. It is so hard for us strong willed Western women here in Beijing. The Western and Chinese men prefer the fragile Chinese women.

A very interesting but slightly confusing short play was called „lovely country“.

Funny was the beijing version of the musical „West Side Story“. The short play was called „Lao Wai Story“ menaing the foreigners in Beijing. It was a fight between the foreign students living in Haidian district of Beijing and the foreign Expats living in Chaoyang district of Beijing. They sang songs of the musical with altered funny lyrics only understandable to Chinese or the foreigners living in Beijing.

This was the last time for Anna Grace to be on stage in Beijing for a while. She is moving to New York city. So this was her goodbye performance. I hope she will be back to Beijing with many new ideas and inspiration.

After the ride Julien and I started to work on his bike. The wheels that we gave to bike mechanics around lunch time were already finished.

But otherwise we just had the bare frame without the matching fork. But he had chosen his colors for the various bike parts.

Of course we ran into some issues like getting the headset cups hammered into the frame or not having the right size seat post holding ring (even though I we had the right one in the Natooke shop). So we were not able to finish the bike. For now it looks like this:

Again a cold winter day and only foreigners came for the Beijing fixed gear bicycle ride out North of the city. Now the rivers like here at the North 5th rind road are starting to freeze.

We cycled along empty roads. Beijing is vast and not as crowded as many people outside of China imagine it to be. In many places it is actually quite quiet.

We then went into a park along the Qinghe River and stopped for snacks (longevity nuts and homemade bread and youzi) in a pavilion.

Then we cycled around the huge and empty park.

Of course the cold weather made us a bit cold and we were sharing our thoughts on best ways to keep the finger and toes warm. Shannon explained his multi layered plastic bag inside and outside of the sock approach to keep the feet warm. I might try that next time.

Then we cycled on to „Leisure Square“. I uploaded my pictures to a webalbum.

Nico and Katiushka took some really nice pictures again. Here are two of their pictures of me balancing a track stand on the concrete structure of the abandoned building.